BHM: Domestic Violence and Black Women’s Powerful Literary Telling

Today’s post highlights the black female poets of the past and present who have provide a voice to the domestic and sexual violence within black communities not as an example of how “black men are more misogynist” or “black women can’t control their men” but as a powerful statement against gender based violence and toward the strength of black women.

exodus by Pat Parker

I will serve you no more

in the name of wifely love

i’ll not masturbate your pride

in the name of loyalty

There has been a lot of talk about the Rhianna and Chris Brown situation on the internet lately. Gossip started almost immediately after the Grammy’s concluded without either performer participating in their scheduled appearances. And while the world lit up first with questions about Rhianna being the victim of Brown’s attack and then with salacious reports about the extent of her injuries based on TMZ gossip, very few people thought about what all of this gossip was doing to potentially re-victimize Rhianna.

Trust me no more

our bed is unsafe

hidden within folds of cloth

a desperate slave

While the high visibility of the Chris Brown case has the opportunity to open up discussion about domestic and sexual violence, particularly within the black community, the way it has been handled across the internet also has the negative effect of reinforcing the very reasons why women, and black women in particular, do not come forward. These reasons include:

Fear of victim blaming – regardless of identity, women are often blamed for their abuse at the hands of an intimate partner, by police, the court, their friends and family, even the media. For women of color, poor women, immigrants, and rural women this blame is even more entrenched as their racial, economic, or social backgrounds are vilified as “more violent,” and/or “more accepting of violence.” The dual or triple forms of oppression that these women have to face in reporting is one of largest stumbling blocks to reporting DSV within these communities and continues to be a huge stumbling block for women in general.

Fear of reprisal – abusers are more likely to be violent and/or lethal when a woman leaves or after an arrest incident. This is further exacerbated by living within a marginalized or religiously conservative community which may act collectively against the victim of abuse for exposing violence in their communities or daring to believe they have a right to a life safe from violence while others have suffered in silence

For the children – many women believe that abusers who do not physically or sexually assault their children are “good fathers” and should therefore not be “deprived of their children” or their children “deprived of their fathers or a father figure.” The reality is that witnessing violence has a lasting effect on children’s psycho-social development as well as being a primary indicator of whether or not a child will grow up to be abusive or to be abused in their intimate relationships. Children living in DSV homes are more likely to have learning problems, emotional problems, be physically or sexuall abused, to engage in abusive behavior toward themselves or others, etc. Witnessing abuse is emotionally abusive to a child meaning whether they are hit or not, they are still being abused. For black and immigrant women of color who still labor under the stigma of being unwed mothers, over-producing, welfare queens, and from pathological communities exemplified by absentee fathers, the motivation to stay with an abusive partner b/c of children is that much higher.

Shame – despite the fact that 90-98% of abusers are men who physically, emotionally, and sexually assault women for nothing more than daring to love them, women carry the shame of DSV in our society. This shame stems partially from the victim blaming that I mention above and partially because we are taught as women that if we were better lovers, caregivers, and partners and if we prettier, thinner, smarter or dumber, that somehow that would stop a man (or in some cases our lesbian lovers) from beating us senseless b/c it is Tuesday at 3 pm or the second Friday, or the sun came out or . . . For black women this shame is exacerbated by the “strong black woman” complex that shames us in both homosocial and mixed gender groups for not somehow “keeping it all together.” It is a similar shame that successful women, women in the movement, or lesbian women feel because somehow our politics, our race, our business acutrement, or our sexuality is supposed to elevate us above those who would harm us for being female.

These are only a few of the issues that impact ALL women and have particular ramifications for BLACK women and Women of color.

You dare dismiss my anger

call it woman’s logic

you dare claim my body

One way that we can all turn the tide, including in this Rhianna case, is to provide correct and supportive information that encourages women to know:

their rights

their worth as beautiful, strong, women

that they are loved and supported

Trust me no more

Your bed is unsafe

rising from the folds of cloth –

Despite the ongoing silence around intraracial (same race) gender based violence in the black community, black women artists, poets, singers, and authors have all weighed in on abuse against black women and tried to map a better way. here are some of their words:

With No Immediate Cause

– Ntazoke Shange

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a little girl is molested
yet I rode the subway today
I sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his daughter
but I sat there
cuz the men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
I might not shut my door fast
enough push hard enough

. . .

I sat in a restaurant with my
paper looking for the announcement
a young man served me coffee
I wondered did he pour the boiling
coffee on the woman because she was stupid
did he put the infant girl in
the coffee pot because she cried too much
what exactly did he do with hot coffee
I looked for the announcement
the discover of the dismembered
woman’s body
victims have not all been
identified today they are
naked and dead/some refuse to
testify girl out of 10 is not
coherent/ I took the coffee
and spit it up I found an
announcement/ not the woman’s
bloated body in the river floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/ not the baby
broken on the floor/
“there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands and lovers with no
immediate cause”

Woman – Nikki Giovanni

she wanted to be a blade
of grass amid the fields
but he wouldn’t agree
to be the dandelion

she wanted to be a robin singing
through the leaves
but he refused to be
her tree

she spun herself into a web
and looking for a place to rest
turned to him
but he stood straight
declining to be her corner

the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world

And in the midst of all these poems for the brokenness abusers leave in their wake, still black women’s words of triumph from abuse linked oppressions and declared themselves too powerful to be suppressed:

Miss Maya Angelou – Still I Rise

Poem About My Rights June Jordan

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can’t

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can’t do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

stay there

alone

as I need to be

alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own

body and

who in the hell set things up

like this

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

to be who I am

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

turn out to be

me

I am the history of rape

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

myself

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it’s about walking out at night

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

of each and every desire

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

I have been raped

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

the wrong sartorial I

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

eliminate by forced

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

cars

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life

And suddenly, the words that had been ignored and pushed away and used to further de-nig-rate us, burst forth from our collective souls, declaring freedom on the page and the stage

Alice Walker’s the Color Purple

Instead of picking over Rhianna’s bones in these moments, let’s come together with the chorus of our shared herstories and support her and each other, b/c this is what we powerful black feminists do:

I couldn’t read everything written on this page, because it touched my heart to the core. I am a black woman married to a soilder. He rejoined the military after a decade to help with our finances. I had an opportunity to walk away, but I thought it best to support him in this endeavor. But, everyday, I realize how wrong I was to start this again. And, sadly, I can’t wait until he deploys so I don’t have to deal with him anymore. I thought this time around I was in control. I don’t get beaten, but I do get shaken up, pulled and tossed around and yelled at, a lot. I talked about to others, but since all I did was talk about it and never did anything about I feel embarassed at this point and do say anything. I keep getting the ‘you’re enabling him’ to hurt you routine. So, I pretty much keep to myself. It’s scary what is written here, it’s rings true for me. This helps alot. Thank you. God bless.

welcome to the blog Delores. It is never too late to join a support group or decide you have had enough and leave. It doesn’t matter how much you talk about it or how often you go and come back, it’s your life and you have a right to choose what you think is best and safest for you. You also have a right to safety from mental, physical, sexual, etc. abuse whether that is being shoved or beaten. Look into the crisis line in your area as a resource and ask them if they have out-of-shelter support groups. They will likely have this for military wives as well but my experience is that these are less effective in helping you get clarity, feel safe, and choose life. best of luck to you.